In the current climate, the need for marketing spend to be more accountable means that affiliate marketing is becoming an increasingly important component of many businesses' marketing mix. The growth of affiliate marketing programmes as a source of new customers continues, as advocates such as Martin Lewis actively promote the use of cashback sites, and consumers increase the amount of online research they do before buying to make sure they get the best deal possible.

How many times are you paying for each new customer?

If you operate an affiliate programme alongside a paid search campaign, display or ad network and appear on aggregators, you could be paying several times over for the same new customer. As your customer moves from general interest in your product, through researching and comparing your prices with your competitors and searching for the best deal you have on offer, they are likely to see your ads in several places and will have been ‘cookied’ by every exposure along the way. Unless you are using intelligent tagging methodologies and performing dedupe match backs, you can guarantee you will be wasting a significant percentage of your marketing budget paying several suppliers for the same sale.

Do you last click de-dupe?

Are you paying for the same sale through several sales channels? Are these errors over inflating your current results? Floodlight tags that report last clicks and/or a comprehensive last click dedupe can prevent sales being paid for more than once.

An e-consultancy survey recently reported that up to 385 million sales a year at an estimated cost of £30 - £40 million was wasted on duplicated payments to affiliates every year. Most companies see between 11% - 20% duplication of claimed sales across channels and between affiliates. Failure to address this problem means a huge chunk of marketing budget is wasted. Clients that use one digital media agency can make sure they implement a single tracking solution across all their digital activity and can ensure every £ of their marketing budget generates value. The introduction of container tags, such as the Doubleclick Floodlight, means most (if not all) of the deduping can be done in real time and reduce the level of manual work required.